Everything Wrong With Corporate Media In One Clip

If Speaker Johnson wants to pretend that he is not up on current events, CNN should not give him a platform to bullshit.

Sorry to intrude on you twice in one day but I’ll make it brief. Watch this clip from Jake Tapper’s interview this morning with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson because it encapsulates everything wrong with corporate media in just under four minutes.

TAPPER: I really have a difficult time imagining that if this was a Democratic president holding a dinner for top investors in his private cryptocurrency, you wouldn't be outraged

JOHNSON: Look, I don't know anything about the dinner. I was a little busy this past week, so I'm not going to comment on something I haven't even heard about.

At this point, Tapper should have thanked Johnson for his time and ended the interview on the spot. He hosts a current events program. If the speaker wants to pretend that he is not up on current events, CNN should not give him a platform to bullshit.

But that’s not what Tapper did. He literally allowed Johnson to talk at length about the “Biden crime family,” about how Trump is one of the greatest dealmakers and the most transparent president in history, and about how Biden’s use of the autopen is being investigated by the House.

Apparently, Johnson is up on the news enough to know that Trump’s cryptocurrency czar is David Sachs, who, in addition to setting national crypto policy, continues to maintain his role in private ventures that are invested in cryptocurrencies.

Did Tapper think to ask Johnson about that massive conflict of interest or about the ethics waiver Trump granted Sachs so he may continue investing in assets that he now has a role in regulating? Just kidding — that’s a rhetorical question. There was zero pushback from Tapper on this too, just as there was zero pushback on everything else.

But all of that is ok because Johnson plugged Tapper’s book along the way, whose publication last week CNN treated as the biggest news event in the network’s storied history. Johnson gently chided him for writing it a year too late and Tapper apologetically admitted that he would have written it sooner, had sources spoken to him about Biden’s decline earlier. What started as a question about Trump’s unprecedented crypto grift turned into a dialogue (really, more of a Johnson monologue) about Joe and Hunter Biden’s alleged crimes and about the former president’s mental incapacity.

Watch all this for yourself. Then ask yourself why the country is in this mess. This “interview” goes a long way in answering that question.